Nearly all heroes with higher stats are
melee heroes, and do not wield the most powerful moves in the game. It makes
sense to compensate these heroes with higher stats.

Some of the heroes below standard
are atrocious. Tiny; those stats are ridiculous; it would be considered an
outlier. Those who read this would probably never use Tiny ever again. Of
course that's misleading because tiny lacks in Agility, which is easily
made up through items, not to mention his monster base damage. Some heroes
have high stats to balance out being weak late game (Lich). Naix has a
huge stat growth but it is in agility, which is not his primary attribute,
resulting in an extremely low base damage. This also leads to some cases
where stats are balanced by base damage; Witch Doctor has a high base
damage but poor stat growth. Of course there are heroes that excel in
both, such as Mercurial.

Keep in mind that those higher on
the list generally perform much better late game, since the stat boost
will come more in effect then. Consequently, it is accepted that Soul
Keeper and Naix are indeed, great late game heroes.